For Niki Ashton, 2017 didn’t go exactly as planned.
Despite launching a vigorous, progressive campaign to become the next leader of the federal NDP, the Churchill-Keewatinook Aski MP ended up finishing third in the race behind Charlie Angus and Jagmeet Singh.
However, Ashton maintains that this campaign still produced a bunch of positive developments, since it gave her a platform to discuss northern issues in the national spotlight.
“I was able to speak out on Churchill, on jobs here in Thompson, in Flin Flon, on the challenges that our First Nations face,” she said. “We saw a tremendous amount of engagement and mobilization, even though our campaigns tended to be underreported and underestimated by the national media.”
Now, with the race long over and 2018 on the horizon, Ashton told Nickel Belt News she is fully committed to bringing these issues off the campaign trail and back into Parliament, especially when it comes to the challenges facing municipalities like Thompson and Churchill.
In Churchill’s case, Ashton mentioned how the citizens are still stuck in the middle of a dispute between the federal government and OmniTrax, a Denver-based company that owns the rail line that connects this isolated northern town to the rest of the province.
Ever since the rail line was flooded back in May, OmniTrax has been dragging its feet to make the necessary repairs and has even become the subject of a government lawsuit for failing to meet their obligations to maintain this key piece of infrastructure.
Ashton has been a vocal critic of OmniTrax throughout this whole affair, and recently called on the University of Manitoba to strip company owner Pat Broe of his honorary doctorate.
Needless to say, Ashton believes that the best way to resolve this situation is to remove OmniTrax from the equation, which is something she’ll be pushing for in 2018.
“I’ve been working with folks in Churchill and across our north, including the mayor and council here in Thompson, to push the federal government to take a much more urgent approach to the situation in Churchill,” she said. “Hopefully, OmniTrax will choose to leave willingly.”
Since she’ll be returning to her role as the federal NDP’s jobs, employment and workforce development critic in 2018, Ashton feels that she will be in a good position to effectively lobby for these causes, while also holding the Liberal government to account.
“We’ve seen in the last few weeks the way in which the Trudeau Liberals have pushed policy that benefits the one per cent in terms of taxation,” she said, referencing finance minister Bill Morneau, who’s been subject to a lot of public scrutiny after it was revealed that his personal business interests conflict with the government’s new tax reforms.
“We need a good government that’s going to put Canadians first, that’s going to support the working class, middle class Canadians, those struggling in poverty, rather than their rich friends.”
Ashton will also have to contend with a different kind of balancing act in the new year, since she gave birth to a pair of twins, Leonidas and Stephanos, on Oct. 31.
While the MP admits that travelling to Parliament and throughout Northern Manitoba while maintaining a healthy home life will be a challenge, she said this dynamic will help ground her as a politician.
“Politics is about life and part of life is raising a family,” she said. “And for me it’s very important that I can carry on with my work and advocate for the key issues that we face and also the key issues that the next generation is set to face, including my kids and kids all across our north.”
